


you are not beside, but within

by rosehale



Category: Actor RPF, American (US) Actor RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 13:32:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16064159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosehale/pseuds/rosehale
Summary: Black jeans, black t-shirt. A teenage dream.(Drawn back together, after a break up).





	you are not beside, but within

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Loving Someone' by the 1975. 
> 
> peace be with you. xx

  This is a bad idea. You thought you shook this months ago. A bad habit that could only get worse. Instead, here you are, in the dark back rooms of this party, hidden from prying eyes, if only momentarily. Noah has his hand up your shirt, fingers aligned to the bones of your ribcage, the rough scrape of his jaw against yours as he presses his mouth to your jugular. The nip of teeth is teasing.

  “Maybe we shouldn't,” you whisper, the words thick. Noah straightens, and you’d forgotten how much taller than you he was. In the dark, he looms, gleaming eyes, kissed pink lips.

  “Maybe we should,” he murmurs. His hand holds your face, and you lean into it. It pulls in your gut, almost addictive, wanting to crawl inside his skin. Noah presses his forehead to yours, nudges your nose. You can almost taste him, red wine and spearmint gum. Your fingers smooth over the curves of his hips, cotton of his t-shirt against your knuckles. He breathes you, just for a moment. Mouth open, just enough, so that when you rise up for a kiss you slot together perfectly. You reach to loop your arms around his neck, fingers soothing through the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Noah makes a soft, needy noise at the press of your hand. His fingertips push at the waist of your jeans.

  “Noah,” you warn, acutely aware of the house still full of people, ready to burst in at any moment. He kisses the corner of your mouth, your jaw, and then his mouth is by your ear.

  “Take me home,” he rasps, one of his hands around the swell of your thigh, half pulling your leg up around his waist. If you let him, you know he’d have you right here. _Take me home._ He must know, surely he knows, that as soon as you noticed him here, the shape of his shoulders under his black t-shirt, the tilt of his head when he saw you, he was always coming home with you.

//

  You drive, because you weren’t at the party long enough to start drinking, and pretend not to notice Noah watching you from the passenger seat. This late, the only songs on the radio are ones meant to be heard by couples, writhing under sheets. The city lights turn you strange colours and every time you meet Noah’s eyes, he smiles, and you forget how to drive for a second.

  “Stop doing that,” you scold, after you almost swerve into the next lane when he lounges in his seat, watches you from where his head is half on his shoulder, smirk pulling at his mouth.

  “Stop doing what?”

  You wave dismissively at him, trying to hold your resolve, “Just… that.”

  At a red light, his hand slips onto your thigh, thumb sweeping across the seam of your jeans. Your eyes cut across to his, find them heavy and dark, despite the way he smiles, all boy and knowing exactly what he’s doing.

  “I will crash this car,” you threaten. Noah laughs, and just the sound of it alone makes your fingers tighten around the steering wheel.

  “I don’t care,” he says, and you almost laugh at him, but you can tell by the way he’s looking at you that he really doesn’t, an atomic bomb could go off and he’d still get you into bed some way or another. You’re nearly home by the time you notice your hand on top of his, thumb sweeping across his knuckles.

//

  “Noah, stop,” you try and shoulder him away as he watches you fumble with your keys. His arm is around your waist and you can feel the press of his chest against your spine and it’s making it hard to think.

  “I’m not doing anything,” he complains, chin hooked over your shoulder as the key slips and misses again.

  “Here,” he says, pulls his phone from the pocket of his jeans to hold the flashlight over the lock. The key finally slides home with a satisfying click.

  “Thanks,” you mumble, as the door swings open. You’re separated from Noah as you walk through the apartment, leaving your jacket over the back of the sofa before disappearing into the bedroom. He’ll find you there. He knows this place almost as well as you do. He’s embedded into the walls. You half expect him to be there every time you turn a corner.

  It was less of a break up and more of mutual understanding that you were heading in different places. Pretending everything was fine was easier than looking in on the quiet, aching pain in your chest. The occasional, desperate sex gifts only reprieves.

  You sit on the end of the bed to unlace your shoes, and Noah arrives, black jeans, black t-shirt, bare feet. A teenage dream. He steps in between your knees, tilts your face up to him, fingers pushing through your hair. He looks at you for too long, like it’s beginning to mean something, so you pull out of his hold to shuffle up the bed, settle against the headboard, the crush of pillows. Noah watches from the other end, thinks. Your palms tingle with anticipation.

  “What is it?” You whisper, when he’s been still for too long.

  “Just looking,” he says, smiles, but it’s almost sad. You beckon to him.

  “C’mere and look.” He crawls up your body, all long limbs, hair in his eyes. You help him out of his t-shirt, smoothing your hands across his chest, feeling him breathe.

  “Want you,” he says, something thick and urgent in his voice. You nod. You know the feeling. He undresses you easily, rushed breaths and hushed noises and the steady presence of him. You feel drunk on him, the warmth of his skin, his quiet sounds, the taste of him. You were right, red wine and spearmint gum.

//

  You end up in his lap where he sits against the headboard, hands knotted in his hair, your face hidden in his neck as you move together, knowing each other, part of each other. He drapes his arms across your back, holds you against him. Noah doesn’t stop kissing you, and you can’t really breathe but it’s okay because you don’t want him to stop. You just want to hold him and be held by him and exist here, only here. He groans, when he’s close, bites down on your shoulder. You want the mark, the discolouring you’ll find in the mirror in the morning, proof that this happened at all. Your body is not your own, for a holy (or unholy) moment, and you shudder through the flooding warmth, the release of something tight at the base of your gut. Noah curses, like he always does, says your name, like he always does. You listen to him pant and wish you could stay like this forever.

//

  The heat of the shower across your shoulder blades, washing everything away. The last suds of soap spiral down the drain. You can still feel the burn of his touch, smell the sweat and sex and boy. When you emerge from the steam, towel wrapped loosely around yourself, Noah is sitting on the side of the bed, wearing only his jeans and looking at the books on your bedside table.

  “You’re still here,” you say, blunter than you meant it. Noah looks up, and his mouth tightens with hurt.

  “Sorry, I’m almost gone.”

  Your fingers cling tight to the damp towel, your hair dripping down your spine.

  “You don’t have to.”

  Noah’s hair is all mussed from your hands, a bruise from your mouth on his throat. He smiles, and it’s a proper Noah smile, changing his whole face. You can’t help but smile back.

  “You sure?”

  You rifle through your pyjama draw so he can’t see the way you want to cry, “I’m sure.”

  The last time you slept next to Noah you woke up to his phone buzzing with messages from a girl you didn’t know. You’d broken up a month before, and he hadn’t dodged the questioning look on your face, and he didn’t need to explain, but that sick feeling in your gut had sat with you all week. The soft material of your pyjama’s soothes your scratchy soul, familiar as the warmth of Noah’s body.

//

  “Do you think we made a mistake?” Noah asks into the darkness of the bedroom. You’re pretending to be asleep and not hyperaware of all the places Noah is touching you. His chest, your spine, his shin, your calf, his face, your hair.

  “What mistake?”

  “Breaking up.” His question just sits there, for a long time. You breathe and think, and resist turning over into him.

  “Still awake?” He whispers, careful not to disturb you if you had drifted away from him.

  “Yeah,” you reply, equally as quiet.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “You.”

  “What are you thinking about me?” Noah asks.

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

Noah’s hand is stroking along your hip, soothing and safe.

  “Cause it’s bad.”

  “Tell me anyway.” His voice is rough post-orgasm and thick with sleep and you’d still tell him anything, still want to tell him everything.

  “Think I’m still in love with you. Think I’ve been in love with you this whole time.”

Noah’s hand hesitates, and then slips over your belly to pull you closer into him. You shut your eyes tight to take the rejection. His whisper is unexpected.

  “Me, too.”


End file.
